Alex Cross is the African American detective in James Patterson's best-selling mystery series about. This book is a departure from Alex's detective work. In Cross family folklore, there is a story about Abraham Cross, who assisted President Teddy Roosevelt investigate lynchings in Mississippi at the turn of the 20th century. Alex decides it is time to write a book about his Great-Uncle Abraham and his cousin Moody.
In Alex's novel, President Roosevelt asks D. C. attorney Ben Corbett, who is from Eudora, Mississippi, to go back to his home town to see if the reports he is hearing about lynchings of 'colored' men are true. Ben is told that the colored man Abraham Cross is someone who can help him.
Ben Corbett finds that there are horrific lynchings and beatings of the colored citizens of Eudora, involving many of its most prominent citizens. He himself is lynched (although he survives), when it is discovered what he is actually doing in Eudora. He brings the wrath of the Ku Klux Klan down on the colored community and the Cross family. He then becomes involved in the trial of three men who murdered several blacks, assisting a special prosecutor sent from the state capitol.
The story is gripping, because that period of history in the deep south was rife with horrible violence against African Americans.
It should be noted that this is historical fiction, not an Alex Cross mystery.
401 pages.
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